Barking Dog: November 11, 2021
Barry Hall - Little Maggie
From a 1964 album called Virtuoso Five-String Banjo
Hall was from Vancouver, BC, and at the time of this recording, he was 20 years old
He got this song from a recording of the banjo player Obray Ramsey, and the song is related to “Country Blues” and “Darlin’ Corey,” collected in Appalachian region in 1800s
Mike Seeger - Josh Thomas’s Roustabout
He was a folklorist and musician and a member of the well-known musical Seeger family who aimed to draw attention to the cultural caretakers that taught and inspired him
This is from his 1998 album Southern Banjo Sounds
Josh Thomas was a Virginian banjo player and singer
Wade Hemsworth - The Jam at Gerry’s Rocks
A respected Canadian folksinger from Brantford, Ontario
Only wrote about 20 songs during his career, though many of them, such as “The Black Fly Song,” “The Logdriver’s Waltz,” and “The Wild Goose” are so ingrained in Canadian culture that people consider them traditional Canadian folk songs at this point
This is one of the best known lumbering songs, and describes one of the dangers of lumbering: the log jam
Log jams occurred when logs got caught as timber was drifted downriver in the spring, and hundreds of logs caught and piled up behind them
River drivers had to go out onto these unsteady masses and try to break up the jam, which would often happen quickly, engulfing the men in a torrent of logs and water, and more often than not, leaving them dead
This song is very likely Canadian, though the origin of the song and the location of the incident in the song is unknown
Hemsworth places it in New Brunswick
Pharis & Jason Romero - Sweet Old Religion
Married duo from Horsefly, BC
Off their 2018 album of the same name
Guy Davis - If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day
He’s a musician from New York City who grew up hearing about life in the rural south from his parents and his grandparents
He first learned about the blues at a summer camp in Vermont that was run by Pete Seeger’s brother John Seeger
He also learned to play the banjo there
This song is from his 1995 album Stomp Down Rider
It’s a version of “Roll and Tumble Blues,” first recorded by Hambone Willie Newbern in 1929
Robert Johnson adapted it in 1936 using the name “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day”, which is where Davis seems to have gotten the song from
Joseph Spence - What a Beautiful Home
Joseph Spence was a Bahamian musician known for vocalizing and humming while playing guitar, and he influenced artists like Taj Mahal, The Grateful Dead, and John Renbourn, who recorded versions of his gospel arrangements
This is off a compilation album from 1995 called Kneelin’ Down Inside the Gate: The Great Rhyming Singers of the Bahamas
Recorded in New York City, May 1965
Jack Owens - I Won’t Be Bad No More
Owens was a blues musician from Mississippi
He learned several instruments as a child but his chosen instrument was the guitar
He never really aimed to become a professional recording artist, and instead farmed and ran a juke joint for much of his life before being recorded during the folk and blues revival of the 1960s when the musicologist David Evans learned about him from other blues musicians from his region
He toured throughout the US and Europe during the last decades of his life
This is from the album It Must Have Been the Devil from 1971
David Francey - Blue Skies
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who started to pursue music as a career at the age of 45 after working as a carpenter and in railyards for 20 years
From his 2013 album So Say We All
Alan Mills and the Four Shipmates - Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her
Canadian folk singer, writer, and actor from Lachine, Quebec
Known for popularizing Canadian folk music, and for writing the music for “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly”
Made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 for his contributions to Canadian folklore
From his 1957 album Songs of the Sea
This song was usually sung during the last few tasks before leaving the ship after a rough voyage
It seems that this song is a modern form of an older farewell shanty called “Across the Western Ocean,” which originated around 1850 during the peak of Irish immigration to North America
The Wailin’ Jennys - Old Churchyard
Folk group formed in Winnipeg in 2002
Current members are Ruth Moody, Nicky Mehta, and Heather Masse, but Cara Luft of the Small Glories was an original member of the group
From their album Fifteen from 2017
This is an old hymn from at least the 1850s
Cannon’s Jug Stompers - Going to Germany
Band was led by Gustavus “Gus” Cannon, and was known for helping to popularize jug bands
Born on a plantation in the early 1880s, he taught himself to play banjo on one he made out of a raccoon skin attached to a frying pan
This song was recorded in 1929, and it’s really unclear whether the title correctly refers to Germany, or whether it was misinterpreted as Germany when somewhere like Germantown, Tennessee was intended
Mott Willis - Someday Blues
He was a blues musician from Crystal Springs, Mississippi
This one was recorded in July of 1975
This is a blues song written and recorded by blues musician Walter Davis in 1940
Corey Harris - Some of These Days
Harris a contemporary American blues and reggae musician from Virginia, known for helping to revive the acoustic blues in the 1990s
This is a Charley Patton song first recorded in 1929
He includes it on his 2021 album The Insurrection Blues
The Golden Gate Quartet - Stalin Wasn’t Stallin’
They are a vocal quartet formed in Virginia by four high school students in 1934
They are still active today, but have obviously undergone multiple changes in membership
A member of the group named Willie Johnson wrote the song in 1943
It praises Joseph Stalin’s response to Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union during WWII
The song was a moderate hit in 1943
Ian & Sylvia - Marlborough Street Blues
Ian & Sylvia performed together from 1959 until their divorce in 1975
This song by Ian
Off their 1965 album Early Morning Rain
The Doc Watson Family - Look Down That Lonesome Road
Watson a Grammy award-winning musician from North Carolina known for his fingerstyle and flatpicking skill
Had a 60 year career, and often played with other skilled musicians like Jean Ritchie, Clarence Ashley, and his son, Merle Watson
This is from the album The Watson Family, on which Doc is joined by his mother Annie, brother Arnold, mother-in-law Sophronie Miller Greer, father-in-law Gaither Carlton, and wife Rosa Lee
Gaither performs this one, and he was an esteemed North Carolina fiddler
This song seems to come from African American tradition
Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir - Look Up Look Down That Lonesome Road
Raucous folk blues band from Calgary that played from 2001 to 2013
This is from their 2005 album Fighting and Onions
Dock Boggs - New Prisoner’s Song
Influential old-time musician from Norton, Virginia who recorded in 1927 and 1929 but worked as a coal miner much of his life
His music career was revived during the folk revival of the 1960s and he spent his later life playing folk festivals and making recordings for the Folkways record label
This one was recorded in 1963, and he possibly learned it from his sister
Peter Gott - Whistle Blow
He and his wife moved to North Carolina in the 1960s after discovering southern folk traditions, and they homesteaded there
Peter even built a log home by hand for them to live in, and has since become known for his log house carpentry
This song is part of the Rueben train song family, though people in Gott’s region of NC call the song “Whistle Blow”
Butch Cage, Willie B Thomas - Who Broke the Lock
They were a blues duo from Louisiana who performed from the 1940s until the 1970s
The musicologist Harry Oster discovered them in 1959 and promoted them at the Newport Folk Festival, and later made recordings of their music
This is a version of the song “Who Broke the Lock on the Henhouse Door”
It was first recorded in 1895, though this version is from 1960 and was recorded at Butch Cage's home
JH Howell - Rock City Blues
The only information I can find about this recording is that it was made in January of 1938 by J.H. Howell’s Carolina Hillbillies
Taj Mahal, Toumani Diabaté - Tunkaranke
Taj is a Grammy-award-winning blues musician from New York City whose career has spanned over 50 years
Toumani a Malian kora player who performs both the traditional music of Mali and collaborates across genres with musicians from around the globe
This is from their album Kulanjan from 1999
Mrs. Stan Marshall - A Maid I Am in Love
This is a field recording from Amherst, Nova Scotia
In her liner notes, Helen Creighton, the collector of this song, explains that she was surprised that the name of the hero of the song was Jutney, when more typical names like Willy, John, and Jimmy often appear in song
When she called the father of the woman who sings this song, he said that it was much more likely that the name was Jimmy, but that the lyrics had changed through the oral tradition over time
In fact, the hero’s name is most often Johnny in other versions of the song, though he has been called Jimmy in some variants
The song is most often called “Short Jacket and White Trousers” or “Maid That’s Deep In Love”
Uncertain where the song comes from, but it’s likely an English sea ballad
Louisa Jo Killen - Blow the Man Down
She was a folksinger from Tyneside, England who began performing in the late 1950s
She moved to the States in 1967 and collaborated with Pete Seeger, and later joined the Clancy Brothers
She came out as trans in 2010 at the age of 76, and continued to perform for several years before passing away in 2013
This recording is from 1977
It’s a shanty the title of which likely refers to the common situation where a strong, sudden wind caught a ship with its topsails up, causing the ship to blow over and be partially capsized
The song is from at least the 1860s
June Lazare - Talking Subway Blues
She’s an ethnomusicologist interested in urban folklore
From a 1981 album of folk songs from New York City from the mid-19th century
This song is not from the mid-19th century, however
Lazare included it on the album as what she calls “outreach”, to show that folklore continued to be created and spread in 20th century urban areas
Woody Guthrie, who we’ll hear after this, wrote the song during his time in New York City
Woody Guthrie - Union Burying Ground
Dust Bowl balladeer and important figure in folk music history who’s known particularly for his songs about the Okie migrants who travelled west during the Great Depression in search of work, though he composed and recorded songs on an enormous number of topics
This is from the album Struggle, originally recorded in the 1940s but first released posthumously in 1976
It’s a union song with some spiritual elements that Guthrie composed
Joe Glazer - The Homestead Strike
He was a folk musician and labour activist from New York who recorded over 30 albums during his career
This is from his 1975 album Songs of Steel and Struggle
The song tells the story of an 1892 confrontation between union members and the Carnegie Steel Corporation in Homestead, Pennsylvania
The union and the corporation, which was the largest steel corporation in the country, were in contract talks, and despite the substantial wage cuts imposed a few years earlier, the corporation delivered an ultimatum, stating that the union must either agree to further wage cuts or the company would dismiss all union workers
The union rejected this ultimatum, and the company paid off and laid off 3800 workers and announced it would now be run as a non-union company
The owner of the company assigned the chairman the task of breaking up the union, which he did by surrounding the plant with a tall barbed-wire fence, guarded by armed Pinkerton agents who protected non-union workers as they were brought into the mill
A few days later, 300 more Pinkerton guards were brought to the city by barge under cover of night, but the community was present and a battle raged between workers and Pinkertons for 10 hours, resulting in the deaths of 3 Pinkertons and 10 workers
Homestead remained unorganized for the next 45 years, but the incident resulted in many songs and poems
The Weather Station - Yarrow and Mint
Tamara Lindeman
Toronto
2011 album All Of It Was Mine
Daniel Koulack, Karrnnel Sawitsky, Joey Landreth - Little Birdie
From Winnipeg
Off the 2015 album Fiddle and Banjo: Tunes from the North, Songs from the South
The Kossoy Sisters - Little Birdie
Irene and Ellen, identical twin sisters, began singing together at age 6 after hearing their mother and aunt sing harmonies in their home
This song is popular in the Appalachian region
Earliest recorded date is 1909 though it is likely much older
The Moving Star Hall Singers - Ezekiel in the Valley
This is off a 1964 album recorded at the Sea Island Folk Festival, which musicologist Guy Carawan organized after five winters of living and working with the people of the Sea Islands of South Carolina
Though the islands were poor and younger generations weren’t as involved with preserving cultural traditions, the islands have been referred to as one of the heartlands of American music
The festival was created with the idea of instilling pride in the people of the islands, who had been conditioned to be ashamed of their creative expressions
The Moving Star Hall Singers were all lifelong residents of Johns Island, their ages ranging from 25 to 65 years old
This song references the biblical story of Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones
Charles Owens - The Welcome Table
From an album of folk music from Nova Scotia, recorded by folklorist Helen Creighton around 1954
This is a gospel song that was also important during the Civil Rights Movement
It was likely brought to Nova Scotia when thousands of previously enslaved people in the United States obtained freedom by travelling north after the war of 1812
The Owens family were descended from these former slaves, and the singer of this song, Charles Owens, was 99 years old when Creighton recorded him for her album
He was still walking to town every day when weather permitted, and made it to at least the age of 101
Cedric Burnside - The World Can Be So Cold
He’s a blues musician from Tennessee who comes from a family of blue musicians, including the drummer Calvin Jackson, who is his father, and the guitarist and singer RL Burnside, who was his grandfather
He’s played with many artists, including his grandfather, Jesse Mae Hemphill, Model T Ford, and Jimmy Buffett
He’s been nominated for 2 Grammys, has won 4 Blues Music Awards, and received a National Heritage Fellowship in 2021, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts
This song is from his 2021 album I Be Trying
Shortstuff Macon - Short Stuff’s Corrina
He was a Mississippi blues musician who briefly received attention in the 1960s through his cousin Big Joe Williams
He made 2 albums while in NYC in 1964 with Williams, but soon returned home and faded back into relative obscurity for the rest of his life
This song seems to come from Bo Carter and Charlie McCoy’s1928 Brunswick recording “Corrinne, Corrina”
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Nancy ‘til the Tape Runs Out
